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Farewell, Novell

$2.2bn Attachmate buy done and dusted

The sale of former local-area networking powerhouse Novell to Attachmate has been completed.

The $2.2bn sale was first announced in November, and it ends the independent life of a once-dominant network operating system vendor. In later years, its original market snuffed out by Microsoft, the company had become the home of the SUSE Linux distribution, only to find its new market overtaken by the likes of Ubuntu.

Completion of the sale was contingent on the sale of a portfolio of 882 Novell patents to a consortium, CPTN, whose members include Microsoft, EMC and Apple. The US Department of Justice cleared the patent sale after making adjustments to it last week.

Attachmate will operate the Novell and SUSE brands as separate business units, with Novell to be headquartered in its original home of Provo, Utah. ®